IT'S OVER ONE POINT TWO THOUSAND!

I was watching a music video that seemed to be for Depeche Mode's song "Perfect" (from Sounds of the Universe). The video was an odd mishmash of a lot of traffic consisting of identical blue vans in a mostly-orange landscape. They seemed to be navigating such that they were driving over blue symbols painted on the ground that looked like two letter Vs (e.g. >>) in the direction of the point.

At some point I realized that there was only one van, but the image had been composited from a single car and rotated to appear to be a lot of traffic. I transitioned to a first-person perspective in the video, and was moving down the road to where I saw in black writing in an orange square an announcement that Depeche Mode was having a surprise party for me.

I started walking through a parking lot of some industrial building. There were some cardboard-looking cutouts with the faces of the band's members animated on the heads in black and white. It was very crude, and they seemed amused. One of them spoke to me.

cutout: "Isn't it nice to listen to a bit of vintage Depeche Mode?"

me: (jokingly) "Oh I used to like them back in High School, when I cared more about whether things were good than if they were cool."

cutout: "You still think like that. So does any of this seem familiar to you?"

me: "Sort of. I have a lot of experiences that seem familiar. But whenever I go back through dream logs its never the same place twice."

We began to walk, and the cutout turned into a more ordinary looking (but large-ish) man who I did not recognize.

man: "Well there are parts of you to which this is new, and parts to which it is not. We have to get your computer updated."

We walked into a room that seemed to have a rather old-timey computer, which was tan with black keys. Despite looking archaic, when he approached it and when he put his hands on the keyboard the keys morphed and seemed to sink into the unit. As he drew his hands away, the keyboard turned back to its normal shape and some of the keys appeared to travel with his fingers away from the keyboard and disappear into his hand.

It seemed to turn into a jumble of mechanical knobs and switches when I tried to use it, as if you'd pull a gearshift and then keys would rise and sink. It seemed like I couldn't get more than 16 or so keys at a time. I was motioned to come into another room that had several large screens and some equipment, it was a bit like the bridge of the Enterprise on Star Trek but all white. A girl pointed to a flyer-sized piece of paper on the floor.

girl: "Can you try and read this?"

I picked it up and tried to make it out. The narrative was about it being important to read... it seemed to be trying to trick the reader by ending one line with "is" and then starting the next with "is" in order to see if you noticed. I stumbled through reading it. A guy who seemed to be some kind of doctor shrugged.

doctor: "Not perfect, but with this much spinal damage, a lot better than we'd expect."

The girl looked at some reading of a health meter that numbered 1200.

girl: (surprised) "That's a lot, mine is only 200!"

doctor: "He's nearly invincible. There wouldn't have been a chance for the attack to do that much damage if it weren't for the..."

I didn't quite understand what he was talking about with the attack, but I was watching on the monitors as they were doing some kind of surgery on my back with a machine. This awoke me twisted up and feeling very uncomfortable in bed.

Currently I am experimenting with using Disqus for comments, however it is configured that you don't have to log in or tie it to an account. Simply check the "I'd rather post as a guest" button after clicking in the spot to type in a name.

The accounts written here are as true as I can manage. While the
words are my own, they are not independent creative works of fiction
—in any intentional way. Thus I do not consider the material to
be protected by anything, other than that you'd have to be
crazy to want to try and use it for genuine purposes (much less
disingenuous ones!) But who's to say?